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Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Green Bean Salad with Greek Olives and Feta Cheese

I love this Green Bean Salad with Greek Olives and Feta Cheese. So many of my favorite flavors!

(Updated July 2008) The twenty-fourth of July is a holiday in Utah, celebrating the day the Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake valley in 1847. Nowdays that means everyone gets an extra day off in July, so my friends Mary and Ken had a barbecue. One of the things I made for the party was this green bean salad, so I decided it was time to finally take a photo of this dish and update the recipe.

The original version of this salad used purchased red wine vinaigrette, combined with a bit of mustard, thyme, and oregano to make the dressing. This time I used some leftover roasted tomato dressing from the White Bean Salad with Roasted Red Peppers and Roasted Tomato-Basil Dressing I made recently. I'll give you both those dressing choices in this updated version, but if you have fresh green beans from your garden or farmers market, (or those lovely French style green beans from Costco) I think you should definitely make this salad.

Trim both ends of beans. (For the thin beans, I trim them by loosely holding a handful of beans while standing them upright on the cutting board to line up ends of beans.) Then cut beans into pieces about 2 inches long. Steam beans until barely tender-crisp, about 5 minutes, then quickly drain beans and plunge into cold water with ice cubes to stop cooking. Remove quickly from ice water and let beans drain very well in a colander.

While beans are draining, make dressing. For red wine vinegar dressing, just whisk ingredients together in a small bowl. For roasted tomato-basil dressing, combine tomatoes, basil puree, vinegar, 2 T water, garlic, and Spike seasoning in food processor. Puree until ingredients are well combined, then taste to see if you want to add another tablespoon of water. Remove mixture to a small bowl and use whisk to mix olive oil into dressing.

Cut onions into strips slightly smaller than beans and cut olives in half. Combine beans, olives, and onions in plastic or glass container with a lid, pour dressing over and stir a few times so all vegetables are well covered. Chill several hours to allow flavors to blend. Just before serving sprinkle feta cheese over salad.

Made with low-sugar red wine vinaigrette or my roasted tomato -basil dressing, this salad is a good choice for any phase of the South Beach Diet or any other low-glycemic eating plan. Be sure to use a moderate amount of feta for South Beach dieters.

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Padma, I can only answer for myself, but I haven't had that problem. In fact when I'm sticking most carefully to the diet, I have more energy. You might need to be sure you're having a snack every 2-3 hours, and maybe check with your doctor. Do take care of yourself!

I like this salad, particularly addition of the feta and the olives. Salty, but then the beans are crunchy.. yum. Well done. And I'm very amused that Utah gets a holiday for when the Mormons arrived! It makes total sense, what a fun way of keeping in touch with regional history.

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